COUNTING THE DEAD

by Susan Cossette

Gilgo Beach, Long Island 2011

Call me Melissa.

He called me whore,

tucking my cell phone and cash

in his hip pocket.

He put me to sleep by the shore,

wrapped in burlap 

among the brushy scrub.

They pull my bones 

from the rocky sand,

my skull from a plastic bag—

Alas, poor girl,

we don't know who you are

but will poke the dry bits left of you

back at the lab.

Faceless, nameless shadows,

trading our flesh for cash.

Now, we matter more in death.

I spend my days counting the dead,

gathering my silent sisters one by one.

Some missing hands, or heads,

my job is to piece them together,

to make them beautiful again.

Megan, Maureen,

babies waiting home for you,

did you ask for this?

Amber, no one noticed you were gone,

feeding the hunger in your veins.

You didn't deserve it.

None of us did.

I found you all,

in the snow squall

of that December night.

Black beach, flashing police lights,

silence broken by sirens

and the hollow hum

of the crime lab generators.

What remains?

Crude holes in the tangled brush,

the buzz of rush hour traffic.

I regard the hot pink spray paint lines

faded on the sand,

marking the boundaries of our world.

A silver medal nailed to a tree.

Crime scene.

Author's note: This is a poem I wrote way back in 2011.  I am originally from the Metro New York area, and this story was all over the news more than a decade ago.  The story of these women haunted me. This past week, it appears that there is some resolution to the story.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.

GARDEN VEGETABLES

by Joan Mazza

The garden blooms again in profusion,
offers snow peas and sugar snaps,
lettuces green and crisp. The tomatoes
have never tasted so good. Maybe
the heavy spring rain kept the ground
moist during  a critical window, maybe

it’s the usual cycle of the earth. Hands
in the dirt provide distraction,
the sense of doing something useful,
healthy, with an outcome you can eat—
most basic feeling of security. Logs
on the wood pile cure for winter
while you can tomatoes, pickle cukes.

Without TV or radio, without knowledge
of the height of children, you’d never know
the year. Gardens’ bountiful vegetables
are an annual constant, a salve.
In Dayton and El Paso, the experts
are closing out crime scenes, taking

photos, mopping up blood, notifying
next of kin. When you hear the number
of injured victims along with the dead,
you won’t know how their lives have been
altered to live with chronic pain and fear.
How many young men are cleaning their
guns and counting their bullets today?

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and has taught workshops nationally with a focus on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Rattle, The MacGuffin, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes a poem every day and is working on a memoir.

LA MOTHER'S LAMENT

by JeanMarie VanDine

Ron Chapple/Getty Images

Another Saturday night
someone dies
in this welt of a town.
Black, brown.
Someone goes down.
Someone’s prized son
never reaches twenty-one.
Like the crow of the rooster,
the call comes before the sun rises.
Beacons glare in black puddles
on a balmy summer night.
Rage plays like an oldie,
under a skipping needle.
Brothers, like broken glass,
can’t mend themselves.
Mothers can’t restrain
their young,
pit bulls yanking
on choke chains.
Tears fall, fade
like chalk marks
on asphalt.


JeanMarie VanDine lives in Southern California, and has taught English in urban high schools—where she has witnessed the loss of many young men—due to violence.